One Final Tale
by Omniskriba
Summary: The memory of the digital world is slowly fading and the digidestined have gone their separate ways. Will the real world with its mundane turmoils succeed where the forces of evil failed? My last entry.


One Final Tale  
  
By Kyoko_Jyou  
  
-o-  
  
Digimon ain't mine.  
  
-o-  
  
[Chapter One: Of Ken and Caffeine]  
  
The sweet, sweet scent of early morning pep-coffee was drifting gently through the dry, cold air at that old dormitory apartment a few blocks off Kasuga Don, less than half a mile from the University of Tokyo and about three miles from the familiar streets of suburban Odaiba.  
  
The skies were as dark and overcast as the fogbound streets; the lamplight barely touching the sidewalk surface at 4:00 AM. Only the brisk humming of cargo trucks broke the silence once in awhile.  
  
It had been a long night; the ordeal having lasted since 10:00 AM the other morning, taking an almost uninterrupted course straight out until thirty minutes ago when Jyou finally took the initiative to knock Ken to sleep by tapping his head with a ten-pound book on Inorganic Biochemistry (available in all finer bookstores). Perhaps thirty minutes of sleep would do him good before he started drilling him on the metallic compounds found in gastric fluid.  
  
Then again, Jyou wasn't much of a 'morning person' himself. All that time, he's been getting his kicks out of unsweetened Philippine 'Barako Plus' Coffee, a variety strong enough to wake the dead (but not necessarily Taichi after half a shot of gin). He had to teach himself the lost art of contending with caffeine shock after just-plain Mescafé Black wasn't enough to get him through his first 72-hour review session back when he was twelve. Ken, though, wasn't too comfortable with his first try, having gone into a ten-minute shaking fit at one sip.  
  
Alas, the thirty-pound canvas sack of beans he took home with him from his last vacation was nearly empty... it had been quite a headache getting them through customs in the first place.  
  
Anyway, Jyou was completely subsisting on caffeine that morning and was, by no means, a pretty thing to look at. His hair was tangled up to resemble foliage more than human hair, his slate gray eyes were bloodshot and his stylish stubble from two days back had grown irregularly to match the houseplant that now occupied his head.  
  
Life had come down to this: a year after Diaboromon and Vamdemon and Oikawa and Archnemon and Black Wargreymon and the extensive list of their ilk spawned into the world, the most threatening things around to plague the digidestined's minds were major exams given out by teachers, none of whom had giganto-mechanical-death-o-rockets stapled to their foreheads like so many evil digimon who actually posed a threat to their lives (although some were reported to have looked and smelled just as bad).  
  
Now fifteen years old, Jyou Kido had moved out of the old Kido homestead after qualifying for an advanced study grant offered by the University of Tokyo to medical prodigies. Of course, he was never sure about the part about being a prodigy but he knew he had enough pressure at home for him not to fail.   
  
It was some four years ago that he took and passed the exams although he wasn't allowed to take the advanced classes until he was in senior high. Top Grantees also got the privilege to go to a Private Senior High for free, a fact which appealed to Ken (who was looking at Genetics as a possible career option) as money matters haven't been going too well with the Ichijoujis for quite some time now.  
  
So this was basically how it went.  
  
Ken was at Jyou's, reviewing for the qualifying exam to get to a good private high school and perhaps even get to Toudai (Tokyo University) for free. Not that Ken was any stranger to the young Kido's dormitory, though.  
  
Some time after the planet was saved one last time, everybody seemed to have drifted apart. While Mimi and Sora were still best of friends, space seemed to have driven a wedge between them. Taichi had somewhat blipped out from the map when he joined the senior high school soccer team while Yamato's band had shifted his attention to the razzle and dazzle of b-list local celebrity stardom. Koushirou, not surprisingly, has been too engrossed with MMORPGs to even consider that most abhorable of social pursuits - interacting with humans on a physical level. Daisuke is still playing soccer to no one's amazement though Hikari seemed to have left his screens. Speaking of Hikari, the inexhaustible pit of sweetness and light is currently dating Takeru's cousin from Hokkaido, to the blonde's great dismay.  
  
Perhaps the most surprising thing here is that Jyou kept the most connections with the digidestined after the break-up. Jyou and Ken had formed something of a brotherly bond between them through the last few months. Perhaps it was because of Jyou's uncanny resemblance to the late Osamu Ichijouchi (well, on his older photos back when he was shorter, anyway) or perhaps it was due to the fact that they shared tips on maintaining long hair. Maybe it was because Ken was forced to also wear glasses now after ruining his eyes in front of the computer the entire time he was trying to conquer the digital world (same with Koushirou who cemented the computer geek look with a pair of unsightly black horn-rims). He was also attending Kendo classes at Iori's at Grandpa Hida's insistence to pay him for tutoring the kid at weekends. He also played as the glasses-wearing mage Skribbles in the Online RPG 'Magnarok', assisting Koushirou during the few sparse hours he had left to breathe.  
  
Then he had this thing with Mimi who would spend around fifty bucks a week calling him from New York about every little thing that bothered her. Naturally, he found it cute.  
  
Hmmm. Jyou sighed as he gulped a quarter cup of his delicious nerve-wracking coffee. He'd never admit it but if he were given a choice between becoming a Board Exam top-notcher and facing Piedmon with Gomamon alone, he'd choose Piedmon any day. Well, at least any Tuesday. Or any of those days he wasn't quite up to instant-cup-ramen.  
  
"Sen... pai?" Jyou heard a hoarse voice resonate from behind him, followed immediately by the sudden fading of the world around him into black. As it turns out, Ken had tapped him ever so lightly on the head with his 2,000-page book on Comparative Anatomy, just enough weight to put his blue-haired upperclassman to sleep instantly.  
  
"You need to get some... [ yawn ]... rest..." Ken said, rubbing his eyes while propping himself up to crack on the books once more.  
  
And so, there was silence once more.  
  
~*~  
  
Two hours and eight separate hentai-inspired dream-sequences later, Jyou awoke to the sound of a large thump, followed by an irregular succession of taps and the sound of cheap porcelain breaking on the linoleum.  
  
Slowly opening his eyes though he was sure to regret doing so, he found Ken violently staggering on the floor, one of his mugs broken on the floor with lukewarm coffee pooling beside the shards. This having happened earlier, Jyou knew better not to panic like he'd usually do in situations like this (unlike that first time when he tried to stabilize Ken's condition by injecting him with a couple CCs of Nyquil). Anyway, he was too tired and sleepy to go frantic anyway.  
  
Slowly, he walked past Ken, leaving the poor boy alone to shake profusely like a convict in an electric chair and headed for his door's mail slot, a corridor apart from the dining area where they were studying.  
  
Quite a few stuff in there this morning.  
  
Bills...  
  
Bills...  
  
Coupon book...  
  
Bills...  
  
Ad...  
  
"Oh, we have one greeting card here from a Miss Miyako Inoue..."  
  
Suddenly, the noises stopped. In a few moments, Ken's tired face popped out from the corner of the corridor, still obviously shaky and very much frazzled.  
  
"I was kidding." Jyou said bluntly, knowing that either one of the words 'Miyako' and 'Inoue' would cram the senses back into him. Ken, mustering his annoyance, quickly swiped the letters from Jyou's hands. For a geeky pair, this was called roughhousing.  
  
"Lemme see. Hmm, it looks like you've got a postcard from your cousin Keitaro..."  
  
"Gimme!" Jyou said, trying to grab the letter from Ken's hands, forgetting how notoriously quick his young friend was as a soccer star. Ken held the arm he swiped the letters with, along with the letters themselves, up as high over his head as possible, standing on the tip of his toes trying to keep the letters out of Jyou's reach.  
  
A sign of poor judgment, this was, as Jyou had grown to a towering 6'2" over the last summer, Ken's outstretched hands effortlessly within his plucking reach. Ken had to settle with making faces at Jyou's chest.  
  
It's amazing how being with another reclusive social misfit has brought out that playful-yet-easily-annoyed facet in Ken's psyche even he forgot he had. Then again, brothers of any degree always had that effect on people.  
  
"Hmm he wants me to come and visit Grandma's hot springs dormitory."  
  
"Sounds nice. You going?"  
  
"Nah. Cousin Kei knows pretty well how 'distracting' the folks are back there. Mom tells me he would have gotten into college earlier if he had just stayed studying at home like she'd suggested."  
  
Flipping back to the pile of letters, a curious white envelope caught his eyes. It would have been totally nondescript if it didn't bear the seal of the University of Tokyo's Grants and Scholarships Director emblazoned on one side.  
  
"Oh my... what if their revoking my scholarship? What if... oh my..."  
  
"Jyou, relax! I'm sure it's nothing ba..."  
  
"Haven't you even realized what you've just said? Right there! Ironic foreshadowing!"  
  
"Jyou, you're making this issue sound like a fan fic plot device! Get a hold of yourself!"  
  
"I feel sick..."  
  
~*~  
  
The first chap to possibly my last fic ever. Please review. 


End file.
